“The first night, I haven’t seen him since. He’s quite pleasant though.”
I groan and check in with Thorin, who is promptly ignoring the fuck out of me.
“He shouldn’t have done that.”
“He didn’t seem to want to hurt me.”
“That’s not what I was worried about,” I admit.
“Right,” Violet says quickly, like the idea of me caring about her safety is ridiculous. Which it is.
“Thorin has a way of doing whatever he wants, not giving a shit about consequences.”
“Thorin,” she whispers his name, which has the over indulgent wolf perking up in my mind instantly.
“Let me take over. She says my name like a caress,”Thorin rumbles sleepily.
There’s no fucking way I’m admitting the whole truth to Violet. It doesn’t matter that she’s my mate. I’m not hers, she’s not a wolf. It won’t hurt her endlessly when this is over, just me and Thorin.
But it’s a pain I’m willing to bear. It’s not like I haven’t been hurting for the last fourteen years.
“Are all wolf shifters that large?”
“No,” I respond.
“Do you hear that? She knows I’m the largest, most capable wolf. Let me shift. Let me comfort our mate. She looks so sad.”
I take a deep breath, grappling with my hold on this form. Instead, I switch the direction of the conversation.
“Why do you think finding your mother, or what happened to her, will help with our situation?”
She licks her full lips, clutching the blanket near her chin.
“That night… my birthday. My magic came to me, my grand-mère said whatever spell my mother had cast upon me lifted and that’s why she could find me. What if that magic is what caused this in the first place. What if it wasn’t my spell, but my mother’s?”
“It could have been Mander,” I say before even thinking.
“What?”
“Mander had us all on suppressants. Jonas and I didn’t know we were shifters until we were eighteen. Do you remember all the medication they had us take at night?”
Her brows furrow, and she shakes her head.
“But then why didn’t my grand-mère find me before I got to Mander’s?”
“Maybe it was your mother. I’m just speaking from experience.”
“Did you leave at eighteen?” she whispers.
It was always our plan. As soon as we were adults, we would get the fuck out of there and start a life somewhere, even if it was hard, even if we didn’t truly understand the outside world.
“No.”
“When?”
“Jonas and I left when we were twenty. Took everything Mander had. Destroyed the school and never looked back.” I don’t mention how Thorin ripped his throat out, or all the horrors we found in the basement.
Her brows furrow. “Four years,” she whispers.
